Silhouette-based gait recognition via deterministic learning

In this paper, we present a new silhouette-based gait recognition method via deterministic learning theory, which combines spatio-temporal motion characteristics and physical parameters of a human subject by analyzing shape parameters of the subject׳s silhouette contour. It has been validated only in sequences with lateral view, recorded in laboratory conditions. The ratio of the silhouette׳s height and width (H–W ratio), the width of the outer contour of the binarized silhouette, the silhouette area and the vertical coordinate of centroid of the outer contour are combined as gait features for recognition. They represent the dynamics of gait motion and can more effectively reflect the tiny variance between different gait patterns. The gait recognition approach consists of two phases: a training phase and a test phase. In the training phase, the gait dynamics underlying different individuals׳ gaits are locally accurately approximated by radial basis function (RBF) networks via deterministic learning theory. The obtained knowledge of approximated gait dynamics is stored in constant RBF networks. In the test phase, a bank of dynamical estimators is constructed for all the training gait patterns. The constant RBF networks obtained from the training phase are embedded in the estimators. By comparing the set of estimators with a test gait pattern, a set of recognition errors are generated, and the average L1 norms of the errors are taken as the similarity measure between the dynamics of the training gait patterns and the dynamics of the test gait pattern. The test gait pattern similar to one of the training gait patterns can be recognized according to the smallest error principle. Finally, the recognition performance of the proposed algorithm is comparatively illustrated to take into consideration the published gait recognition approaches on the most well-known public gait databases: CASIA, CMU MoBo and TUM GAID. •We present a silhouette-based gait recognition method via deterministic learning.•The dynamics of gait motions can be learned by using RBF neural networks.•The test gait pattern can be recognized according to the smallest error principle.•The discriminability provided by the dynamics of the silhouette features is strong.•We show good recognition performance on four widely used gait databases.